Development - LouisFahrenheit/Factorio-Control-Center GitHub Wiki

English | ะ ัƒััะบะธะน

Development

Instructions for local development, running tests, and building release packages.

Prerequisites

  • Node.js 24
  • Git
  • C++ build tools (required to compile better-sqlite3 native bindings):
    • Windows: Visual Studio Build Tools (with "Desktop development with C++") or Visual Studio Community
    • Linux: build-essential (gcc, g++, make) and python3

Project Structure

  • src/ โ€” Backend (NestJS, TypeORM, SQLite, WebSockets)
  • client/ โ€” Frontend (React, Vite)
  • locale/ โ€” Localization files (server_lang_*.json, server_commands_*.json)
  • scripts/ โ€” Packaging and systemd service scripts
  • wiki/ โ€” Documentation source files for GitHub Wiki

Development Setup

The easiest way is using the interactive development launcher:

  • Windows: Run StartDEV.bat
  • Linux: Run ./StartDEV.sh

The launcher can install dependencies, start dev servers, run tests, and pack releases.

Manual Setup via Terminal

  1. Clone the repository and install dependencies:

    git clone https://github.com/LouisFahrenheit/Factorio-Control-Center.git
cd Factorio-Control-Center
npm install && npm install --prefix client

  2. Start the backend and frontend in separate terminals:

    # Terminal 1: Backend API (port 8080 with auto-reload)
npm run start:dev

# Terminal 2: Frontend UI (Vite dev server on http://127.0.0.1:5173 with HMR)
npm run client:dev

  3. Open http://127.0.0.1:5173 in your browser. Vite automatically proxies API and WebSocket requests to port 8080.

API Documentation (Swagger)

FCC has a built-in interactive Swagger UI.

  1. Add to your .env file: 
    SWAGGER_ENABLED=true
  2. Open http://127.0.0.1:8080/api/docs in your browser.
  3. To send protected requests, log in through the web panel or pass API_TOKEN configured in .env.

Tests and Linting

# Tests
npm test            # backend unit tests
npm run client:test # frontend unit tests
npm run test:all    # run all tests

# Code quality
npm run lint:check  # backend ESLint check
npm run client:lint # frontend ESLint check
npm run lint        # auto-fix linting issues
npm run format      # format code with Prettier

# Check translation files
npm run locale:check

Building and Packaging

Production Build

# Build both frontend and backend
npm run build:all

# Run the production build
npm run start:prod

Release Archives

The packaging script creates ready-to-use release archives in the release/ folder:

npm run pack:release
  • Windows: release/factorio-control-center-win.zip
  • Linux: release/factorio-control-center-linux.tar.gz

(Note: to package Linux releases with native modules from Windows, run the command inside WSL or a Docker container).

Building a Custom Docker Image

If you modified the code and want to build your own Docker container:

  1. In docker-compose.yml, replace image: with build: .
  2. Build and start the container: 
    docker compose up -d --build